Not everyone takes a challenging experience and turns it into an opportunity to help others.
But Reshell Wilson isn’t like everybody else.
Having raised six children between them, Wilson and her husband, Freddie Wilson, should be enjoying their empty nest, perhaps vacationing. Instead, they’ve been raising their grandkids, 17-year-old Tashaun and 16-year-old Tamia for the past 11 years.
As kinship caregivers, the Wilsons join a community of individuals and families who provide full-time care to children of close family friends or relatives. Wilson has become an unofficial ambassador for her kinship caregiver support group. Having experienced an arduous process to gain legal custody of the grandkids, she advocates for other relatives trying to do the same.
In 2018, Wilson testified in Olympia about her struggles to become a kinship caregiver.
“It took me a year [to gain custody] because I had to do it by myself, and I didn’t know the process,” Wilson says. “I’m at the courthouse two, three times a week. They’re giving me stuff, and I don’t turn it in the right way or at the right time.”
Wilson’s testimony to state lawmakers helped win passage of Senate Bill 5651 in 2019. The law created a kinship care legal aid coordinator in the Office of Civil Legal Aid to walk kin through the legal custody process to become kinship caregivers. Two years later, Senate Bill 5151 gave the Department of Children, Youth, & Families go-ahead to expedite the process for kin to become licensed foster parents, and access financial assistance, legal guidance, education support and other benefits available to unrelated foster parents.
Seeing the grandkids with their daughter, who struggled with drugs, alcohol, and schizophrenia — or with strangers — was not an option for the Wilsons. That same stance leads many grandparents or relatives to become kinship caregivers.
However, the decision often requires sacrifices. Money that the Wilsons had saved for retirement went toward buying a new house that would fit the grandkids.
“We were almost $100,000 from paying our old house off, and now we’re about $400,000 in the hole at 60 years old,” Wilson says. “We had to change a lot in our lives.”
The couple has been together since 2003, married since 2016, and have never been on a vacation together. They provided care for Tashaun and Tamia off and on — sometimes weeks or months at a time since both were babies — as their mother struggled with substance abuse. When the kids were younger, their day care often called Reshell at work, asking her to pick up her grandkids due to
behavior issues. Yet her supervisors and co-workers were gracious and supportive, even donating clothes, diapers, and milk for the babies.
“It was really hard,” Wilson recalls. “It wasn’t an easy thing to be parents a second time around.” To make sure their own cups are full, the Wilsons have been part of a marriage-centered church group for the past 20 years. During monthly meetings, the couples discuss marital issues and process them as a group. They also participate in Atlantic Street Center’s Kinship Care Support Group, which is both a resource and source of community for kinship caregivers.
Last year, the family mourned the death of Freddie’s daughter, which triggered destructive behaviors from the grandkids. The couple had to navigate new territory in validating the kids’ pain and anger while discouraging negative behavior. Reshell cites the kinship group as a fount of support, hand-holding, and encouragement by other caregivers who had addressed similar circumstances.
“I truly believe things happen for a reason,” Wilson says. “Whether we liked it or not, the kids needed us, and to have enough love for a little person to change your entire life, to take them in and raise them as yours — I don’t think anyone can do it better. It’s a strong lifetime commitment, and the joy comes when you can smile, they can make you smile, and you can have good times.”
Nonetheless, Wilson jokes, “I foresee them being with me until midnight when they turn 18. I’m, like, ‘You gotta be working or in college, because Papa and I — we’re ready to travel.’”
This article is one piece of our special series on foster care, highlighting the voices and experiences of foster youth, caregivers, and communities supporting them. Explore the full series to read more of these important stories.
Unsung Heroes: Caring for kids who aren’t their own | Across Washington, tens of thousands of kids are being raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives — often without formal foster care support. As the state prioritizes keeping families together, kinship caregivers are filling the gap, frequently at great personal cost. Explore how policy shifts, community programs, and grassroots resilience are changing the face of caregiving and the future for these children.
